


Asleep Under the Rain

by monchy



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 09:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/417481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monchy/pseuds/monchy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just a tiny mood piece, really, but... A windy day and a palace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Asleep Under the Rain

  


The wind blew outside. It was dark and rainy, and the grey clouds hanged above the palace as an omen of worse times to come. But the wind, that was the worst part of their whole ordeal, the one responsible for them being held inside the fortress. They should have been on a ship and on their ways home hours ago, but instead they were here, trapped, helpless and ultimately bored. It wasn’t that the place was terrible, really. After all, both he and Mace were inside a luxurious palace, one packed up with pretty court people, but of course, that wasn’t nearly as good to them as a trip home would have been. They had been away from the Temple for far too long now; even Quinlan was getting restless.

Quinlan turned around, his brown cloak floating around himself in a theatrical manner, and then he walked to the closest window. It was big enough to allow him a nice view of the darkened city and the ugly sky. Some time ago, he had made a lame joke about the storm that was coming their way, but Mace hadn’t even had the decency of looking up from his datapad. Apparently, and in his own words, whatever it was he was reading was more important than listening to Quinlan’s voice. And really, Quinlan loved the guy, but sometimes he could be a total jerk.

Meanwhile, the wind kept blowing. Everyone could hear it inside the big room as it met with trees and buildings outside, constant and threatening. Some little girl had said something about it being the song of angels, and while Quinlan had smiled at her, Mace had almost opened a hole inside her skull with his glare. No wonder Anakin had been so afraid of him when he had been a child. Quinlan looked back at the window, and suddenly, it opened widely and brutally with a hard blow of the wind, throwing papers and bottles to the floor, and letting a cold breeze drift inside the room. There was a commotion as royal princes and dukes and counts and so on went straight to their families, as if expecting an attack from the enemies they didn’t have. Mace, though, always at the ready, jumped forward. He was there in a second, pushing the big window next to Quinlan, and quickly setting everything back in order. There was a general sigh of relief inside the room.

Quinlan whistled. “Well, now that was exciting.”

Mace raised an eyebrow, and stared at him through a contained half smile. Well, that was a little better, at least in Quinlan’s opinion. As Mace returned to his abandoned datapad, Quinlan gazed one more time outside, and cursed their luck. Quickly after, though, he followed Mace and sat next to him on the leather couch he was occupying. There wasn’t nearly enough room for them both, but Quinlan didn’t mind a little squishing.

Quinlan looked at Mace as his dark eyes scanned the screen before of him, and as he did so, he passed his hand through his scruffy beard. He would kill for a nice shaving right now, but that would still have to wait long hours. The wind had cut the water inside the palace, also the light and the heat. Mace’s face was perfect, though, seeing as he had shaved and showered that morning, as he always did. Mace was a creature of habits, and Quinlan found that a lot more endearing than he dared to admit; he was, after all, the warrior by denomination, so it was only normal that he craved a little bit of routine in his life. He sighed.

“Mace.”

Mace, unaware of his call, or perhaps too annoyed to answer it, stayed quiet, his eyes fixed on his datapad, as well as all his attention.

“Mace.”

Quinlan poked him.

“Macey.”

And then he poked him again.

“Maaaace,” he whined, poking him harder.

“What!? What? What do you want, Quinlan?” Mace turned his head towards Quinlan as Quinlan raised both hands in a sign of defense. He didn’t know Mace was that stressed out, or he wouldn’t have been so purposefully annoying. He would have just been his normal annoying.

“Nothing,” he said, finally, lowering both hands and folding them on his lap. He worked on his best puppy dog eye look, and turned his eyes to the window they had closed minutes before. It was already threatening to be opened again by the wind. “We could… take a walk, or something.”

Mace huffed, and instantly went back to his datapad. “A walk through where?”

“Gee, I don’t know. The palace.”

“You take a walk.”

“Oh, fine.” And Quinlan refused to admit that he sounded about five years old. Then again, Mace had proven more than once that he was capable of angering the most peaceful of people while staying his very calmed and composed self. The truth was Quinlan was one of the few people who could get to him. His discussions with Obi-Wan were one of the urban legends that plagued the Temple, too, seeing as the two men kept everything bottled up until it eventually exploded in a terrible fight of wills.

Quinlan sighed a few seconds after he stopped looking at Mace. He had looked detached and focused, so Quinlan was probably getting nowhere just by staring at him, anyway. With heavy legs, he stood up and started walking. He chose a dark corridor (not that there were any other kind), and walked slowly, his eyes trained on the corners and possible hiding spots out of pure habit. Once a Jedi, always a Jedi, right?

The hallway, despite being dark and creepy, was really just another boring place. Quinlan started checking the doors he found open out of pure instinct. There was nothing mischievous or even curios about his attitude, and that bothered him to no end. Force, he wanted to get out of this place. He would get a nice shower, and then he would get inside a warm bed with Mace and they could sleep for a month. As he passed to another door, he took the time to look outside through one of the windows on the hallway. They were slightly smaller than the ones in the room where Mace was probably still reading useless information from his datapad, but still big enough to let him see the hard rain that was now falling down onto the ground. Well, it just kept getting better and better.

Absentmindedly, Quinlan opened what was probably his ninth door, and he found himself regretting it the moment he saw a couple inside the room, engaged in a somewhat compromising position. “Uh, erm, sorry.” He closed the door with a hard thud, and blinked.  
Personally, Quinlan thought that the two kids had made a definite good choice. Quinlan had, as a matter of fact, proposed Mace to take the exact same course of action, given the cold and the fact that there was absolutely nothing for them to do in the palace, but the look on Mace’s eyes had been a lot more than a negative. Really, the things Quinlan put up with sometimes, but well, that’s love for you.

The next room Quinlan entered (after knocking twice and hard, so he wouldn’t be accused of making the same mistake twice) was full of towels and what looked like thick blankets. They were all dark blue and soft. Quinlan thought of all the people back in the main room, bored and freezing to dead, and with a long, lingering sigh, he took a pile of blankets between his arms and started walking back. He didn’t take the time to stare through any windows, but the sound of the wind accompanied him all the way back. It was going to be one long night.

Upon his arrival, a little child, but not Mace’s eyes, which he noticed were still on his datapad, greeted Quinlan. Annoying, stubborn man. Quinlan pursed his lips in a thin, white line, and proceeded to give blankets away. It wasn’t all that cold inside the room, but it certainly wasn’t warm, either, and it seemed that those tiny pieces of fabric did a lot for the general upset behavior of everyone in the room. Once he was out of blankets but for one, he walked towards Mace, and dropped all his weight beside him.

“Force, Quinlan, be careful, will you?” murmured Mace, completely unaware of his ‘warming the place’ mission.

Quinlan smiled, though, and wrapped the blanket he had left around Mace’s back and his own, being therefore forced to scoop closer to Mace’s body. Mace looked up this time, his hands still on the datapad, but his eyes on Quinlan. He cocked his head to one side, and Quinlan smiled at him, big and sunny.

“Give me that.” Quinlan removed the datapad from Mace’s hands, and before he had time to complain, he was already wrapped around him and half on top of him, covered now by both the blanket and Mace’s body heat. It was nice. “That’s kind of nice.”

Mace breathed in and out slowly, and Quinlan knew he had been defeated. With a weary sigh, he put his arms around Quinlan and leaned back on the couch, resting his head on top of Quinlan’s unruly curls. His muscles unclenched, and his tense body relaxed as it sank deeper into the couch and Quinlan’s arms.

“You think we’ll be here for long?” wondered Quinlan, resting his head on Mace’s chest, and closing his eyes to the view of the now constant rain. Its sound was lulling around him, and he knew that that along Mace’s heartbeat would be enough to put him to sleep.

“Don’t know, Quin.” Mace half murmured, half yawned.

Outside, the wind blew, but inside, it was warm.


End file.
